


The Rags of Time: II

by xpityx



Series: The Rags of Time [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 03:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Jack almost mistook the man who stepped out of the shadows for a stranger, but only because he was dead and had been for seven months. Charles Vane had lost a great deal of muscle mass in that time, and his head had been shaved unevenly, but Jack would know his friend at the ends of the earth.





	The Rags of Time: II

_ Prologue _

 

He was no longer sure if he was Charles Vane. Charles Vane was a pirate. He fought and fucked and took what the world owed him. The man in this cell did none of those things,  _ could do _ none of those things. Early on, he had goaded his guards into anger and violence as much as possible: once it had been clear they meant to keep him in this dark place for a long time, he had sought out his own death. After all, death was better than defeat, better than this slow unravelling. He woke in the night sometimes, sure it had all been a dream and he was still in the forest, a boy with no name, a slave. They had shaved his head when he arrived: both here and in the forest. With the weight of it gone he felt unmored. They had pulled his right arm out of joint twice and it had never healed fully, so he was unable to raise it higher than his shoulder, and even that much made his eyes water at the agony. 

 

He could fight with both but relied on his right. He could not swing a sword. How could he be Charles Vane if he could not swing a sword?

 

Charles Vane had friends, loyal men and women who would stop at nothing to retrieve him. He had been alone in this cell for more than six months. 

 

How could he be Charles Vane?

  
  


  
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Jack walked into the rooms he sometimes shared with Anne and tossed his sword belt onto the bed before he’d even locked the door. It had been one of those days. Being legitimate, or semi-legitimate, seemed to involve three times the paperwork, and anyone who tried to sell the idea that piracy hadn’t involved any bureaucracy had never had to wade through Eleanor Guthrie's account books. 

 

He was a little embarrassed at how long it took him to notice that he was not alone in the room. He blamed civilization of course, which is what he blamed most of his ills on currently, and swore if he survived the next few minutes he would turn fully pirate again, mostly so he would once again be able to shoot first and ask questions later.

 

“Yes?” he asked, wondering if he had time to reach for his sword belt.

 

He almost mistook the man who stepped out of the shadows for a stranger, but only because he was dead, and had been for seven months. Charles Vane had lost a great deal of muscle mass in that time, and his head had been shaved unevenly, but Jack would know his friend at the ends of the earth.

 

“Charles?” he asked, his voice wavering.

 

Charles took two steps forward and Jack moved to meet him, pulling him into an embrace. Jack sobbed once, and Charles held him tighter in response. When they stepped back from each other Jack risked placing a chaste kiss on his friend’s stubbled cheek. Charles allowed comfort only under certain circumstances, usually involving Eleanor Guthrie’s machinations and a great deal of opium, but he surmised that this was an exception. 

 

Charles just looked at him once he’d stepped away, and Jack resisted to the urge to reach out for him again, to prove he was really here.

 

“Come sit down,” he said, steering him to the desk with one hand on his back, “I’ll call for some food.”

 

He went to go to the door to do just that, but Charles reached up, lightning fast, and snagged him around the wrist.

 

“Jack,” he said, and nothing else.

 

He swallowed, not exactly sure what was needed from him, “I won’t be a moment, I won’t even leave the room”.

 

Charles nodded, then let go. Jack opened the door and called out to a member of his staff to bring some food but not to enter. He realised his hands were shaking as he turned back to where Charles was sitting, slightly hunched over.

 

His knees buckled with the realisation that he had been alive all this time, alive and they had not even thought to look for him. 

 

“God, Charles, I’m so sorry….”

 

“You didn’t know. You were lied to. I know you would have looked for me, that you must have thought me dead.”

 

Jack took two steps towards him. For all that he had said to others of the bravery of Captain Charles Vane, of his friend, he could never convey the truth of it: the wonder and weight of being trusted by such a man. 

 

“We, Anne and I, we travelled to Port Royal the second we heard - it was only two days after you had been transferred to Jamaica. There was a body, hung up in the bay. Hair like yours, same build, wearing your clothes and jewels. Anne had to stop me trying to climb the cliffs to cut you down. Birds had already, they’d already…” He was crying a little, and he wiped at his face. 

 

A knock at the door saved him from Charles' reply, and he took the food and put it in front of him, feeling a little steadier now he had something to do. 

 

Anne had gone into the interior with Max and wasn’t due back until tonight at the earliest. She was better with Charles in some ways than Jack was himself, she knew what to say to him, how to comfort him when he would accept no such thing. 

 

He ate steadily, and Jack, for once, could think of nothing to fill the silence. 

 

“Got any rum?” Charles eventually asked. 

 

  
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When Charles awoke he squinted into the weak morning light the had crept under the curtains. Even now, weeks after his escape, he still could not be in direct sunlight for long without his head beginning to pound. 

 

Jack had his face plastered into his shoulder on his left, and to his right he could see the curve of Anne’s back under the loose shirt she wore to sleep in. Charles knew of the scars she hid, but only by reputation. As far as he was aware, Max and Jack remained the only people she had shown them to. Voluntarily at least. 

 

In the forest there had been a man of faith. He’d known the Bible back to front and upside down, or at least it had seemed that way to Charles, and he’d sometimes tell stories from it late at night. Charles had loved the one about being swallowed by a whale when he’d been a boy, and had asked for it many times before the man had died. Killed by a fever, if he was remembering rightly. He’d told a lot of stories though, and one that had stuck with him was about a rich man who’d given the church a heavy weight of gold and riches, and another, a poor women, who’d given very little. When Jesus looked up he declared that the widow had given more than all, as she’d given all she had.

 

He’d never tell Anne, or fucking anyone, but the story made him think of her. She’d never embraced him, or offered a kind word when he was wallowing over one thing or another, but she slept soundly beside him when she would kill another man for looking at her wrong. He drifted back to sleep, safe between his friends. 

 

When he awoke next Anne was gone and Jack was up and writing at the desk. There was a gently steaming bath at the foot of the bed, and Charles made use of the chamber pot before stripping and getting in. 

 

One of the first things he’d done once he’d escaped his cell was wade into a stream and wash off seven months of matted filth. 

 

“How did you escape?” Jack asked, eventually. 

 

“A sickness came to Spanish Town, must have felled half the town and most of the prisoners. They hadn’t come to check on us for three days when a guard came down with water, sweating and staggering in his uniform. Reached through the bars and strangled him. Saw only two soldiers on my way out of town. Can’t lift my right arm high enough to swing a sword, so had to fight with my left. Nearly died in the fucking jungle though.”

 

“How did you come to be back in Nassau?” He added.

 

Jack cleared his throat in a way that meant he had done something that he knew Charles would be less than pleased about and said that perhaps he should eat and dress before they discussed what had happened in his absence. Charles was too tired to push, Jack would confess all when he was ready. He always did.

 

  
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“I thought you were  _ dead, _ ” Jack said again. 

 

“And what? You decided that once I was out of the way the articles you signed were a farce and you proceeded to roll back into the arms of English rule like fleas returning to a dog?!”

 

It was worse, of course, than he could have imagined. When Jack Rackham fucked up, he did so fully, with no half measures. 

 

“Charles, I know this is a shock but…”

 

“You sold Captain James Flint to _a fucking_ _plantation!”_

 

Apparently he had not been the only one who had lost his sense of self along the way, who had succumbed to this unravelling. That was what civilization did, after all, it made the horrifying easy, and the good seem beyond reach. 

 

“Actually, I believe some money was given to the owner for his upkeep and…” 

 

Charles growled.

 

“His lover was there, he  _ wanted _ to go!” Jack blurted.

 

He had seen the Barlow women dead and grey at Charlestown, but perhaps she too had risen from her grave. 

 

“She’s dead,” Charles snapped, half to convince himself.

 

“No, no,  there was another, he had been taken to the Plantation and Silver arranged for Flint to…”

 

Charles slammed his hand onto the desk and Jack shut his mouth with an audible click of teeth.

 

Fuck. Seven months. Teach was dead, Flint was imprisoned, Max ruled a _civilized_ Nassau, Featherstone was the Governor and Eleanor... 

 

“Okay. As I see it, the first thing that needs to be done is to free Flint. Do you know where he is being held?”

 

Jack shook his head mutely, rightly sensing that Charles did not want any verbal input from him at this moment in time.

 

“Does Max know?”

 

Jack hesitated, then nodded.

  
  


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It was hard to read Max, of course: it always had been. A useful tool when you used to fuck men for money, he imagined. Now he’d had the pleasure of surprising her a little, but if she feared for her life then she was hiding it well. She had offered him a drink and a seat, but he was not in the mood to take either. 

 

“The power behind the crown,” Charles sneered from where he stood in front of her desk, “It is still a cage, even if you were the one who constructed it. Could you imagine Eleanor settling for such a position?”

 

“Eleanor Guthrie was a white, educated woman, born to a renowned family of large fortune. Both my skin and my beginnings are too dark to compare my choices to hers, so I do not care what Eleanor would or would not have accepted. I do not care what  _ you _ accept. You will not do anything to unbalance this life I have built for myself, not this time. I will not allow it.”

 

She was tiny, Charles realised. Even standing she barely came to his shoulder. And yet, he was too exhausted to fight with her. So many compromises had been made and at so high a cost. What of the Maroon Queen and her daughter? What of Scott and his sacrifices? He was already tired of confronting all that had happened in these last seven months, whilst he’d been rotting in a Jamaican cell. 

 

He sat heavily, leant forward and rubbed his hands over his face, as if he could wipe it all away.

 

“Tell me where you sent Flint,” he said, after a pause.

 

When she had told him all she knew they sat for awhile in silence. Finally she got up and poured them both a drink. He accepted it without a word of thanks.

 

“Do you know what Mr Scott’s name was? The one he had before the Guthrie's bought him?”

 

Max shook her head, but gave no indication that she thought it a strange question.

 

“I have no idea.” She drank a little, and they fell back into silence for a while. The sound of the street drifted into the room, muted by the thick shutters and heavy curtains. 

 

“What was yours?” she asked, eventually. 

 

Charles shrugged, “Didn’t have one, they called me ‘boy’ or ‘hey you’. I named myself, in the end.” He paused then asked, “And yours?”

 

“Harriet.”

 

Charles toasted her, tossed back the rest of his drink and took his leave. 

  
  


  
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He hadn’t a single coin to his name, but guilt was a great motivator and Jack had been more than happy to hand over a purse. He’d been less pleased when he’d realised that Charles genuinely meant to go to Savannah, and was planning on taking his ship to do so. Charles didn’t care about some deal he’d made, he didn’t care about fucking stability, or what Jack thought Eleanor would have wanted. Jack had told him that she’d died, killed by the Spanish invaders, but it was not an idea that would stay in his mind. 

 

He would go to Savannah and see if Flint still lived. Whatever else would follow from that, he would see. Anne appeared next to him as he directed provisions onto the longboats, leading a grey horse with a pack slung over it’s saddle.

 

“No” he said, shortly.

 

She just looked at him before adjusting the stirrups, first on one side and then the other.

 

“You betrayed your articles, you sold Nassau to the fucking highest bidder and then you made Flint a  _ slave _ . You think that I can forgive…”

 

_ “You were fucking dead!  _ You were dead,” Anne repeated, calmer, “so you got no say. Now you’re alive again, we’ll fucking listen. But not about then. And now you can’t even lift a fucking sword, so you need me and I’m coming.”

 

Fucking Jack and his inability to keep anything to his fucking self.

 

“What about Jack?”

 

She smiled at him, that slight lift of one side of her mouth which was as good as her smiles ever got.

 

“Fuck Jack,” she said. 

 

He snorted. 

 

“Fuck Jack,” he agreed.

 

He’d forgive him, as he’d forgiven him for the slaves, as he forgave no other, save Anne. But for now, fuck him.

 

Of course, the sentiment lasted as long as it took for them to load up the Colonial Dawn and for Jack to appear in the Captain’s cabin. 

 

“I know you are very angry with me right now, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I have discovered that seven months of thinking that I would never see you again except in the heat of hellfire was quite enough for me, so I will be your silent shadow during this endeavour.”

 

Charles just looked at him.

 

“Mostly silent shadow.” He half shrugged. “Perhaps, a more silent than usual shadow. Also, it’s my ship.”

 

 

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There was no port they’d be able to sail into, so they were to land a little downriver of one of the Yuchi settlements and make their way upland from there. The horses they’d bought for the journey were in slings on the deck, and one idiot had already barely managed to dodge a kick. The voyage would take no more than two days though so they would have little opportunity to cave in anyone’s head before they got to shore. 

 

Jack was avoiding him, having taken over the Quartermaster's cabin with Anne. Charles wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not. On one hand, he was beyond angry at what he’d done, but nearly seven months alone in a cell had worn at his ability to tolerate his own company. He made do by sitting with the rest of the crew during meals. None of them were known to him, but they of course recognised him. As a result he sat a little apart from them, but the familiar smell of salt, sweat and shit was comforting in its own way. Anne sat with him more often than not, but she kept her own council. She had new scars across her hands, but when he asked about them she’d only shrugged and said she’d got them saving Jack’s skin. Her explanation of Teach’s death had been equally perfuctionary, so at least he knew she was doing it on purpose. They all did this: when one of them was angry with another, the third would always seek to make peace. It had always annoyed him before, as it was most often Anne employing her very limited peacekeeping skills, but now it was soothing to be able to fall back into their routine dynamic. Anne would remain close, but silent, until he was forced to speak to Jack for the sake of his own sanity. 

 

He hadn’t asked about Eleanor yet. Jack had come into his quarters on some pretext or other and had stayed long enough to say that he’s heard that Flint had been with her when she died. He was telling himself that he was waiting until he saw Flint to ask him, but he knew Jack well enough to realise that it had been a purposeful ploy to allow him time before he had to face his grief. That he did grieve would puzzle Jack, who had never understood his regard for her, but he recognised that grieve he would. 

 

For the moment though, he concentrated on the limited maps that would guide them up the coast, on making sure they had enough water for the journey, and on stealing himself to go back into the fucking jungle. 

  
  


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High walls surrounded the plantation, hazy in the heat. The sugarcane fields themselves lay outside the main compound, where they were waging a losing battle with the encroaching wildlife.

 

It took two days of waiting and watching until they caught a glimpse of Flint, bent double, cutting large swathes of green with a machete whilst a horsed guard looked on. Charles gritted his teeth against the urge to kill the guard as he sat, smug and proud as all around him men laboured in the intolerable heat. Jack started to say something to him, but he saw Anne catch his arm and shake her head.

 

It took two days more days before they got their chance to get Flint’s attention. Jack had tried to talk to him about the reduced hours they seemed to work compared to the plantations of Nassau, but Charles had gotten up and walked away to keep from killing him. He could hear the familiar cadence of Anne telling Jack he was a fucking idiot.

 

Charles was to be the one to approach him, and he waited on the edge of the field, hidden in the deep shade. 

 

He was debating how to get his attention, when Flint looked directly at him.

 

He stood staring for so long that Charles worried that the guard would come to see what the fuck his problem was, then he turned, gave a short whistle that the nearest guard acknowledged, and walked directly towards Charles. 

 

He didn’t know he was going to embrace the other man until he got close enough to do so. He stepped back, a little embarrassed, then angry at himself for it, so he didn’t give much thought for what came out of his mouth.

 

“Were you always this short?” he rasped.

 

Flint snorted, genuine amusement on his face.

 

“Didn’t you used to have hair?” he replied, and Charles scowled at him a little more. “We thought you were dead.”

 

“It’s a long story, but we’ve come to get you out of here.”

 

Flint,  _ James,  _ looked away and said nothing.

 

“What? Don’t tell me you  _ want _ to stay,” Charles couldn’t hide his disgust.

 

“No! Of course I don’t want to fucking stay. It’s Thomas...” he started, but added no more. 

 

Charles raised an eyebrow, “Your other secret lover?”

 

“Yes,” James confirmed, through gritted teeth.

 

He held up his hands in mock surrender, “Apologies, but you seem to have had so many clandestine affairs it has become hard to keep track.”

 

James continued to glare in manner he imagined most would find intimidating.

 

“He will want to take everyone with us and… compared to where he was, this is not the hell you would imagine. I’m not sure how he will react to being outside these walls.”

 

“You want to free every last soul in there, I’ve got no objections,” Charles replied, serious again, “you know I don’t, but I have no fucking idea how we’re going to get even you two out, let alone some thirty others. As for the rest, I believe I know something of Hell. Your Thomas will be fine once he’s away from this place.”

 

James offered him a wince and a half-smile at that, “I have to get back, if we spend more than a minute on a piss break they come looking for us. Tomorrow I will be working on the south side, near the boiling house. We take a break at midday - I will be able to slip away for a few minutes before they count us back in.”

 

Charles nodded. 

 

“I’ll be there.”

 

James hesitated for a second, “It’s good to see you,” he added. Then he turned and walked back to his labours, whistling again to the guard to signal his return. 

  
  
  


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James had dreaded telling Thomas, despite the six hours he’d had to think over exactly how he was going to do that. 

 

He had taken it calmly though, and James struggled to hide his disquiet that it had taken a group of strangers coming to his door to convince him of the prison he was in. Thomas, of course, had known that there was something he was not saying. For all that he had perfected the blank mask of Captain Flint, he was unable to keep up any such subterfuge near Thomas. Miranda too had always known the truth of him.

 

“What is it? You are less pleased than I thought you would be,” Thomas asked.

 

James kept his voice low. They were sat on the furthest bench from the rest of the men, but he was more aware than ever of the guards stood chatting near the entrance to building.

 

“I have wanted us to leave this place since the day I arrived. I tell you three notorious pirates have come to free us and you…” He made a helpless gesture, “You would accept their help, without question of who they are or the methods they will use in order to free all of us.”

 

Thomas seemed unable to meet his eyes, “Forgive me, my love, it is just that these strangers from your old life, they confirm for me something that I… They confirm that there  _ is _ still a world outside this one, that there is somewhere for us to escape  _ to _ .”

 

“And where did I come from?” James asked, nonplussed.

 

Thomas smiled a little, but it was strained.

 

“And therefore what thou wert, and who,

I bid Love ask, and now

That it assume thy body, I allow,

And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. ”

 

James placed his hand over his lover’s and Thomas instantly twined their fingers together.

 

“You have not fabricated me from whole cloth, my love, I am here.” 

 

Thomas was quiet then and James let him be as they made their way back to the the dormitory with the rest of the men. 

 

“Tell me more about the people who have come to free us,” he eventually asked, once they were lying together in their narrow cot. 

 

So James told him as much as he could about the three pirates that had come for them. About Captain Vane, a name that had made even Thomas’ eyes widen a little with recognition; Jack Rackham with his many words and ridiculous clothes; and his shadow, Anne Bonny, as deadly with a sword as any man. 

 

“Did Miranda like her?” he asked.

 

“Anne Bonny?” James queried, and Thomas nodded.

 

“I don’t believe they ever met,” he said, caught a little off-guard at the question. 

 

Thomas looked thoughtful as he absorbed that, then his face took on a sly expression that James had seen only once or twice since their reunion.

 

“What? You look like the proverbial cat with the cream.”

 

“Tell me more about this Captain Vane that you so respect,” Thomas requested. 

 

“Do I now?” James asked, a little affronted at the suggestion. “What makes you think I do any such thing?”

 

“You called him Charles… you like him. Or, perhaps, there is something about him that you admire.”

 

James looked at him with narrowed eyes. “I had forgotten how annoying it is when you do that.”

 

Thomas smiled a little. “Well, go on then, do not keep me waiting, you know I have no patience.”

 

James sighed, mostly to see Thomas’ smile widen.

 

“Charles has always been a pirate. Whatever civilization is, whatever it’s effects, they do not touch him in the same way they touch others. When I first met him I thought him feral: an animal acting on instinct. But he more than that, more than all of us I think, sometimes.”

 

James was quiet for a moment, and Thomas waited him out.

 

“Rackham, his friend, his partner, had been captured by the Governor. He came for him, regardless of the cost to himself. We all thought he’d been hanged for it, and he would have thought that a painful death was a price worth paying to have lived his life exactly how he wished, for the freedom of his crew, for the freedom of those he loved.”

 

Thomas brought up their linked hands to lay a kiss on James’. 

 

“My love, I do not regret that you did I asked and left me in Bethlem. All I wanted at that moment was for you and Miranda to be safe.”

 

“I didn’t do as you asked though,” James said, ashamed, “I didn’t look after her.”

 

“And one day, you will tell me all the ways you failed her, and I will tell you all the ways I failed both of you, and myself, and we will be angry with each other, and cry, and reach forgiveness. But for now, it is enough that you are here, that you have ten years worth of memories of Miranda to share with me. It is enough that soon, we will be free again.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my long-suffering beta [SlumberousTrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlumberousTrash/pseuds/SlumberousTrash).
> 
> One more part and an epilogue to go ^^
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](http://xpityx.tumblr.com/) where I'm sobbing over Black Sails with anyone who will listen to me.


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